Gods of Nabban

by K V Johansen

  Something brushed over him like a trailing cobweb, an insect on the skin. Something drawn by the fog, wondering at it. An awareness, searching.

  He held himself very still, very small, as he had when the eyes of the Lady passed over him in Marakand. There was nothing. Only fog, cold air and day-warmed water, damp fields breathing. Fog was common to the season, fog was blinding, muffling, a blanket in the dark.

  The touch faded, distant as a dream and he slid down again into his own place, the night and the fog. Found the pattern . . . became a part of it.

  The Mother stirred uneasily, like a sleeper disturbed, but she did not reach to touch him as the gods had when he crossed the border. Already, she was less than she had been, even then.

  No matter, in this moment. What might be, what must be—what could, what should be if only he could move the world about him as he needed—hovered. No words. Pattern, yes, a juggler’s wild spinning of pieces, a weaver’s threads flung all in the air but he could seize and move and bind and shape if only he kept all moving to his hand.

  No words. Easier to have no words, to let them go. Ahjvar grew angry when he forgot to speak, when he let the words go because they were too thin and yet too complicated and cumbersome a thing to hold in mind. No words in the fog, in the night, only the flying threads, the pieces of a shattered shape all tumbling through the air, falling, and this one, now, to save, others to lock into it, others it would draw, and hold in strength, to build . . .

  Ahj was angry now. Not for silence. For this place, for the old lord, for Meli. Ghu was not sorry it was so. It warmed him, oddly, and awed him. There had been no one to be angry for him, for them all, when he was a child.

  He climbed the bank to the raised road and broke into a jogging trot. The way beneath him was his, and the night, and the fog. When the castle loomed, an artificial island the size of a Praitannec village, it was as though it was a mere slow thickening of the fog. Stone walls and whitewashed towers, low spreading roofs upon roofs, only a faint solidity. The moat was lost in the still floodwaters, but the shallow fishback arch of the bridge showed where its depths lay. The eastern gatehouse rose dark over them, wings of the roof held out like a swooping bat.

  Too cold for swimming. He waited for the other two to come up beside him.

  “Take my pack. I’m going around to the postern. There’s a boat there. Keep well back and follow along on the shore. Don’t splash. Don’t fall in.”

  “I could open those for you,” Yeh-Lin whispered against him.

  “No.” It must not be her doing, not Dotemon’s, to be the first assertion of—of what he would claim. He knew that, felt it in the marrow, and the riverwater that for this moment seemed to flow in his veins.

  But he did not want to pass over this threshold. He did not want to be again within these massive walls. He had not wanted to bring Ahjvar to this place. Deep in his chest there was a slow-smouldering anger that had never died, all his life. He had taken it in with his mother’s blood, been nourished on it within her womb. The lord, the castle, all Nabban . . . he did not know which it was for. Pity, mercy . . . they were what he needed. He had found them for Meli. The Kho’anzi Daro Korat had been a fair master, on the rare occasions when he had had to do with such as Ghu—small things, the least of things, within the great compass of his lordship. He had had far worse treatment from fellow slaves and from folk in other lands who would call slavery a sin against their gods. But something burned. He did not want Ahjvar, who would have killed that spiteful, stupid, pitiable fool Meli for striking him, to know of it, to unleash on the folk of this place the rage that burned undying in Ghu himself. Nor to be by him here, where he had been owned and despised and beaten and of no worth. It sickened him to stand here.

  Ghu took a breath, and crossed the bridge before there could be any further debate, most of all with himself. Torches burned there to show up any approach but the fog swallowed them, muffled their light. He passed under the blackness of the outflung eaves of the gatehouse; wings, but not for his sheltering. The outermost gate was a grille of age-dark cypress, bronze-studded. He set a hand to it. The river’s breath wrapped him. He could bring it down, the gate, the whole weighty stone strength of this tower. In this moment . . . he turned away, to move a little longer in quietness, like the river’s rising in this broad vale.

  The angle of the high scarp where the moat rose to meet the curtain wall was steep, faced in smooth stone. Just around the next bend to the north there was a postern gate and no bridge, only a boat, usually, moored to a ring in the wall. There were carp stocked in the moat once the floods subsided, harvested for the family’s dinner. Slaves of the outer services, stables and gardens, weaving-sheds and workshops, potters, carpenters, smiths, masons, tile-setters and all, had poached them when they could. He remembered that, now. Much he had put from his mind and pretended it was forever. Steeper than he remembered, this scarp, almost vertical, a great cliff, but he had been smaller last time he clambered along it. He splayed himself flat, toes and fingers seeking the joins in the stone. If he slipped, it would be a splash too great to be dismissed as a leaping fish or disturbed duck. If he slipped, better to have swum after all. He remembered the water, deep but swampy, stinking—it would be fresher now in the floods, if colder. He’d been thrown in more times than he wanted to remember.

  Too much he did not want to remember. But he remembered everything, everything since the river. His mother drowned him . . .

  Foot slithered. He clung by fingers alone a moment, till toes found a hold. Crawled up and went on. Finally, the first of the many rounded corners, but the only one he needed to pass. There, the jutting darkness of the postern gate, a stone porch, and the punt where it had always been, as if he had never gone. It dipped and bobbed as he used it to scramble around to the little landing-stage, still an inch above the waters. No torches here to gild the fog, which had thickened as he worked along the scarp, until he could see neither the far side of the moat nor the moving shadows of Ahjvar and Yeh-Lin. He leaned against the door and closed his eyes, fingers spread on the wood. Let himself go again, into cold, into night, into biting frost and the death of the year, when even mountain oaks might crack and stone split, hillsides sheer away . . .

  Iron bolts, top and bottom, secured the door. Wood cracked. Stone split, a snap like breaking ice. Loud, but there was no other sound within. Ghu leaned, gently. The door moved.

  Not, Ahjvar would say, subtle. But it was done.

  He left it to cast off the punt, sculling over the stern. The oar creaked on its pin. Too loud. Ahjvar caught the blunt prow and steadied it as Yeh-Lin and the dogs leapt in, followed them, pushing off from the drowned and stony shore, leaning up to his elbows in the water.

  Ghu sensed, rather than saw, Yeh-Lin’s movement to speak and touched her hand to silence her. Once inside, he picked up the bolts, fallen with splintered wood and flaked stone, staples and nails and all. They were still white with frost, but warmed to his hand. He closed the door behind them, cutting off the fog that reached to follow, and fitted the broken ironwork back in place. Even by day the passage was dark. It would fool the eye until someone tried to draw the bolt. Time enough.

  The passage was narrower, lower, than he remembered. A sharp bend, a grille suspended above, meant to be dropped to trap an enemy, and gaps in the ceiling through which to finish the work. Mostly, in the peaceful years he had known, it had been a passageway to the punt and the fish for the kitchen staff. There were two men in the chamber above, asleep. He wondered if they were meant to be, and wished them to stay so. Through the thickness of the wall to a covered passage and out into a cobbled yard. The fog pooled there, wrapped him as if in welcome, followed him.

  The castle was a maze of interconnected baileys, buildings, towers, lanes, and narrow passages on many levels. The main keep was a serene and lofty island floating amid gardens at the centre of it all, stronghold without, palace within. Neither slave nor free servant of the outer castle crossed those ga
rdens on the green moss of the lawns or the white-gravelled paths unsummoned. Ghu was not sure he would even know the way, but the keep wasn’t his aim—not yet. He threaded a path between walls, through gates, across cobbled yards and hard-packed earth, along narrow alleys, up and down steep, shallow steps and around broken-backed turns, making for the stables near the western gate, but taking a shortcut he would not have dared as a boy, along the bamboo-laid pathway from the house-slaves’ quarters. Burnt ruin of a weaving-shed. Burnt ruin of the soldiers’ kitchens. The potters’ building with its doors smashed in. Gates into yards wrenched off their hinges. Truly a village, this, but one made to be a maze as well. Dawn could not be far distant. Past the household troop’s barracks, its doors hacked open, a reed screen hung to keep out drafts. No one kept a watch there, though many slept within. The stable complex, beyond an intact granary, was familiar. Strong scent of horse. He crossed the square of it to the western stable block, with its grand entry porch and low square tower over it. Sacked, Meli had claimed, but the damage could have been far worse. The general would have wanted the castle whole and fit to live in. A watchdog stirred and came to him, nosing at his hand. Not one he knew—he had been gone almost a dog’s lifetime—but it did not growl even at Jui and Jiot.

  Here, he risked a whisper, a few words, sending Ahjvar and Yeh-Lin to wait, with the dogs, in a corner behind a stack of straw. Ahjvar stood a moment, but then followed Yeh-Lin in silence.

  Through the door. Not a homecoming, no. He had a strong impression of the ruined broch on the cliff with the unending sound of the sea below, smoky, salt air, the shaft of light where their attempt at a turf roof had fallen in. A deep and painful yearning to be back there, not here, not in this place again, whelmed up in him, choking, but horses stirred, and horses were welcoming. He quietened them, not even a word, urged the boys asleep in the far corner room with the lord’s most expensive harness to sink deeper in their dreams, and took the stairs to the tower room.

  The door opened silently when he lifted the latch. Much as he remembered, smell of horses and oiled leather. He found his way to the side of the bed, a pallet on the floor, without tripping on anything. The room seemed smaller than he remembered, only a few paces to cross. He crouched just out of reach. The shutters of the windows were closed against the night. It was some sense other than vision that assured him this was Horsemaster Yuro. Fortunate he was here, and not over the river with the foaling mares. In a nest of blankets in the far corner, like a dog’s bed, a child curled sleeping. Ill, Ghu thought. Usually the ill of the stables were handed over to Baril, who oversaw the eastern stable wing and the girls and womenfolk of the horses, especially if they were female, as this child was. Baril was the one who made the salves and the potions for drenching. Fever on the child. Her dreams were formless, fearful, dark things, hard to grasp.

  “Master Yuro?”

  The man stirred.

  “Master Yuro! Wake up.”

  He woke with a groan and a snort and a mumbled, “What is it? Ghu . . .?”

  Eight, nine years it must be at the least since he had gone off down the river—time was a bit vague before he came to Gold Harbour, and he had been a boy then. The man couldn’t know his voice.

  “Ghu,” he confirmed. “Master Yuro—”

  “What?” More alert now. “Is that—? No . . . Who?”

  “It’s Ghu.” The room was cold, no embers in the brazier, nothing at which to light a candle. He rose and opened the shutters. From here the fog was a sea of white, hugging the ground, but the sky was clear and there was enough light to make out shapes; the moon would not set until after sunrise. Yuro folded a gown around himself. “Oh, Sen. What is it?”

  “No, it’s Ghu, Master Yuro,” he said patiently, and stood still while the man trod close and peered into his face.

  “Ghu? No.” Hesitantly, “I was dreaming of Ghu. Come back drowned out of the river looking for that damned white colt.”

  “Yes.” Words fled him, but Yuro thought he still dreamed. He must speak. “Not dreaming, Master Yuro. The gods’ truth, I’m Ghu. I’ve been in the west.”

  “Ghu. Ghu! You damnable fool, what did you want to come back for?”

  Ghu turned aside from the swinging arm and hooked the man’s feet out from under him, reflex more than anything, as the failed slap had been. Yuro lurched up and flung a punch, not now the mere back-handed cuff that had driven so many words home when he thought a boy wasn’t listening. Ghu knocked him flat on his back, standing off warily as the man gasped for breath. The dog down with the horses barked once at the thump, which would likely wake someone, but if nothing else followed they wouldn’t bother crawling out of warm blankets . . . No one called out, not even Ahjvar.

  Yuro sat up, didn’t move to come after him again, so Ghu offered his hand and Yuro did take it to help himself up. Ghu gripped his wrist and jerked him close. “Don’t hit me. Ever. I have a friend down below will kill you for it.” His own anger surprised him. Yuro had never had too heavy a hand, compared to some.

  The horsemaster stood frozen, till Ghu let him go. He moved away, rubbing his wrist. “You’re not Ghu. The boy’s long dead.”

  “I am. Truly.”

  Master Yuro groped on a shelf, seeking flint and steel, from the sound. Eventually he struck a spark into a dish of tinder and lit a tallow candle at it. The yellow light showed his hair grey-streaked, which it had not been, his broad weathered face more lined than formerly. He brought the candle too close to Ghu’s face, peering at him, only half a head taller now.

  “You look like him. Maybe. Grown up.”

  “It’s been a long time. If you didn’t think it was me, why hit me?”

  “I thought I was dreaming.”

  He could hear Ahjvar’s acidic comment on that. Even in their dreams, people hit him.

  “You shouldn’t have come here. They’ll burn your face for you.” A glance at the heap in the corner. “At best. They’ve killed her, I think.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Let her sleep. Maybe she won’t wake ever. What in the cold hells did you come back for, if you actually survived to get away? I figured you were in a ditch with your throat cut years ago.”

  “I needed to come back.”

  “I used to dream you were drowned. I don’t know why. It was the snow nearly took you.”

  “But I was drowned.”

  “That. No, you weren’t. You were alive and wailing when Gomul fished you out.”

  “I know, I remember. But I was drowned, regardless.”

  “You don’t remember; you were a newborn babe.”

  “I do.” Smell of mud and water and crushed green reeds. Cold water that wasn’t cold, that carried him . . . The boy whose hands felt so hot they burned, though it was only that he was cold as the water himself, when they plucked him up, thumping his back, and words . . . no meaning in the words then. It was a long time before words had meaning. The world had been such a vast and overwhelming thing . . .

  That Dar-Lathan girl, the one they had to keep in chains . . .

  They spread them around the imperial manors, after the last battle of the war. Never too many. Gave them to the lords. They didn’t make good slaves, the warriors of Dar-Lathi. A lot of them died, one way and another.

  She got the baby on the long march north . . .

  Wouldn’t give suck to the infant . . . They kept her chained to stop her killing it. To stop her running.

  The lord didn’t know they’d chained her. He wouldn’t have stood for that. Old Duri’s orders . . .

  Worked the staple out of the wall and walked into the river in her chains, with the baby . . .

  It was Gomul who named him, and the stable-folk used to hold him to suckle among a litter of puppies until the scandalized and furious house-master Duri found out about it and, since the Kho’anzi forbade that he be thrown back to the river, which Duri at first ordered, made one of the under-cooks his wet-nurse. Gomul was dead of a bad fall by t
he time Ghu was sent back to the stables, four years old, maybe, or five, not old enough to be any use among the horses but judged too slow of mind for the kitchens, and mute besides.

  He remembered the smell of the kitchens. Disorder wild like a storm. Incomprehensible noise. Heat and shouting and the kitchen-master who struck out with an iron ladle at any failing or slowness. The stables were better.